"On cold nights like this, I miss the sun." Vera mused. She did not shiver from the wind but buttoned up her lab coat up to her collar. A quiet simper made her quirk an eyebrow.

"Hahaha, and here I thought growing up in icy Kanbalar would toughen up your skin. You're still so sensitive to the cold," she cackled at Vera, her body swaying back and forth, then tensing at a sudden realization. "Oh! What if we burn all of Rashugal to bits? We'll set fire to this damned lab, Orda Palace, that icky med school, the marsh. Then that'll solve all our problems, yours, mine, Auj Oule's!"

Vera chuckled uneasily, still not used to Agria's jokes, and threw one back. "But is that what the king of Auj Oule wants? It would be hard for Gaius to unite all of when half of it is in crisps."

She felt a jab at her side from Agria's scissor-like sword. "Oi, shut it! Don't bring His Majesty into this!"

Vera chuckled and raised her hands in mock surrender, but tensed at the clacking of metallic armor behind Agria. She placed a gloved hand to her lips, a silent signal for her to shush. Her hazel eyes flickered to the two Rashugal guards by the laboratory's entrance, their spears glinting under the faint glow of the lumen trees. Luckily, they haven't moved an inch from their post.

Agria had ditched her lab coat long ago, opting to roam the boardwalks of Rashugal's capital Fenmont in regular attire and leaving Vera with hers. They were undercover scientists at the Laforte Research Center. It was rumored the Rashugal king had constructed a weapon capable of mass destruction, the Lance of Kresnik, in this lab. Tonight they plan to steal the Lance for Auj Oule right under his nose. Vera could very well lose her head, which is why she needed to clear it in the fresh night air before going through with this perilous mission.

"You know," she muttered, the peaceful calm-before-the-storm atmosphere rendering her mind a wanderer and her mouth unfiltered. "Sometimes I wonder why you, a Rashugal citizen, call Gaius His Majesty instead of Nachtigal. You said you were part of one of Rashugal's Six Ruling Houses, right? What happened?"

Her whispered inquiry was met with a mumbled, "I know nothing about houses. Only that they should just burn," and silence. Vera sighed at her failed attempt to break through Agria's shell, leaned over the boardwalk railway, and peered into the water. Agria's twitching back, the full moon, and green-lit clouds waved back. Rashugal's nighttime spirit cline was truly beautiful, but the wavering reflection of Orda Palace did nothing but make her alert and stiff.

"Don't worry," Vera attempted to comfort Agria (and herself). "I'll be out of your hair by tonight. I received orders and a ferry ticket back to Auj Oule. Presa will arrive in a few days to help with the Lance. I'm sure she'll be a much better partner than me." She patted one of the pockets of her lab coat.

Vera saw a lumen tree flicker: it was time. The Lance of Kresnik operated by absorbing the mana of both humans and spirits, and the dimming lumen trees, lit by light artes cast by the capital, was a sure sign the Lance was warming up and draining the lesser spirits of Fenmont. It was definitely in this lab, and once it finished absorbing mana, it will be relocated. Vera adjusted her hair into a makeshift side ponytail to hang over one of her shoulders and faced Agria's blank, freckled face. Agria opened her mouth, but before she could reply, Vera cut her off: "Tonight we will part. I'll see the sun soon, but I must first see to it that you come out of this mission in one piece."

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The glass door slid open once Vera swiped her ID. She slipped it into her breast pocket and held her breath even after the door closed behind them, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness and the faint glow of the test tubes. They had successfully snuck away from their post and infiltrated the lab room of the Lance's first test subjects.

With a quick gesture, both headed to the ladder in the back of the room and ascended, Vera first, then Agria. The ladder's clanking rang across the empty room. If she listened carefully, she could hear the groans and muffled cries for help in the test tubes, its contents sensing presences in the room, and filled with false hope of rescue. They won't last long in the mana-sucking machine, for their mana is their source of vitality. The tubes were made for murder.

On the raised platform, she spotted a large contraption with a screen filled with text: a data center. Not wishing to leave fingerprints, Vera typed with her gloved hands. "I'll find the Lance. Keep watch." Her partner only cackled in reply and rocked back and forth behind her. "Well, speed it up, airhead. I'm seriously thinking about burning the Lance. Or activating it to suck all these icky scientists' mana and-"

The whirring of an opening door interrupted her psychotic monologue, but Vera made no effort to silence her typing. "Agria," her speech was curt as she shifted her body into the shadows. "We have a visitor."

"And I have ears," she hissed back. Though it was dark, Vera felt daggers from her partner's glare. "Turn the damn lights on! I'll handle it."

Vera complied, only pressing a few buttons in response. The 'visitor' sounded like they were alone. She would normally stop Agria and her violent takedowns, but they couldn't take any chances tonight. As she inserted her ID card into the machine to download data on the Lance, Vera heard the faint gasps of whoever was below, probably at to the corpses in the green containers. She refused to look at the limp bodies in the tubes herself; they make her sick.

"Oh? So you're the visitor I heard about." Agria leered over the railing and brandished a dramatic hand to the test tubes. Her tone had reverted from friendly retorts to familiar sadism. "Like what you see?"

"Who? Who are you? What did you do to these people?!" Whoever this guy was, he was certainly no researcher, Vera noted. A trespasser, like her and Agria, but an innocent one who made the wrong turn.

A cackle erupted from her partner as she reveled in the intruder's expression. "Oh, I just love the look of fear in your eyes!"

Without hesitation, she leaped from the railing to the voice below. The clanging and occasional shout were not helping Vera concentrate, but they didn't last long. She found video footage of Rashugal soldiers transporting the massive weapon into a chamber and searched for the location in the camera feed: Sector 1, Lab 04. She installed it into her ID, fingers furiously clicking on the keyboard.

"I got it! Let's go!" Vera waved her red card over the railing. Below Agria taunted the "intruder" in her evident victory. The boy on the ground tried his best to crawl away from her, but she sneered and readied a fire arte. "Come on, you're such a killjoy, Vera. At least let me finish him off!"

"But I don't want to die here! Isn't there another way to resolve this?" Seeing the emerging shadow of a (hopefully) more sensible person, the dark-haired boy sat up and held up his arms in surrender, the burnt ends of his navy blue overcoat smoking from Agria's beating. He tried to meet eyes with Vera to gain her pity.

"Hey! You're not going to live any longer goggling at her, boy." Agria thrust her sword, now split in two like a scissor and a fireball between its blades, in front of his face. He flinched in response.

"Quit it, Agria!" Vera was halfway down the ladder when she heard the mechanical door hum open. "Another one?! We don't have time for this!" She snapped her head around to see this new "visitor" stroll into the middle of the commotion, her flowing blond hair swishing behind her rather revealing lavender outfit.

"Ah-ha! So you're the visitor I heard about." Agria aimed her arte toward the newcomer instead. "It'll be more fun to kill you first!"

The boy yelled at her to run, but she held her ground. The approaching fireball only grazed her cheek, as if the air around her figure redirected the arte's projection.

"I prefer you didn't." Behind her appeared a silhouette of a fiery giant. Unfazed, she fired back her own arte with such speed Agria had little time to react. Though resistant to artes of her element, she hit the ladder with a clanging thud and crumpled to the floor, knocked out.

"Agria!" Her partner-in-crime didn't think twice about what she did next. With one hand, Vera slid down the ladder's side like a pole, and with another, she grabbed the first thing she felt in her lab pocket and tossed it with alarming accuracy at the blonde: The dagger dangled inches from her heart. She had caught it by the handle in the nick of time.

Vera pulled close Agria, whose body was burning up. She cussed—could this mission have gone any more wrong?—but felt a blade pressed against her neck and froze at the cold voice:

"Tell me where you're hiding it. I know it's here."

Vera shivered.

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In the art of espionage, Vera was used to being back into the corner, but those confrontations were with people she's had at least some conversations with, people she knew how to rile up. But she didn't know the woman threatening her life or the boy approaching them, where they came from, or how much they know.

Vera mustered the remains of her courage and resolve. She's wiggled her way out of stickier situations before. This one is no different.

She raised her hands in diplomatic surrender, revealing she was unarmed, and let the unconscious body fall onto her lap. The tables have turned with the arrival of this woman. She defeated Agria, a fire-specialized mana user, in minutes with a single shot. The silhouette—she had no doubt—had been Efreet, the Lord of Fire. Whereas Agria had that boy groveling before, now Vera was the one on her knees. Unlike the boy, no one would barge through those doors and save her. Vera was on her own. She lifted her head to face the second "visitor."

"Let's trade."

The cold blade pressed closer to her neck. "I doubt you're in a position you can bargain out of."

A down-to-business client and skilled summoner, she noted. Vera reached into her breast pocket, keeping one hand in the air, and pulled out her red ID key card. She presented it to the intruders.

"I'm Lavera Yul, a lab assistant in the Laforte Research Center. Whatever you folks are looking for, I wouldn't know. In my low position, I wasn't privy to any plans, but my ID card should give you access to most of the rooms and labs. In return, please let us go. I don't want trouble."

The woman seemed half-convinced at her explanation but accepted Vera's offering, slipping it under her clothes. "And what do you know about this?" She gestured to the mana-drained corpses in the tubes.

"Only that they're Fenmont citizens who were invited to the lab this morning. My partner and I were curious about what our higher-ups were planning and investigating what the machine does up there." Vera pointed up the ladder. "We weren't exactly assigned this room and were on edge, so my partner attacked your friend over there." Her dark eyes flickered to the first "visitor."

She paused. That was her schpeal.

Once the sword left the vicinity of her neck, she let out a low breath. Her assailant sheathed her weapon and studied one of the tubes in murmured contemplation before concluding: "It must be somewhere else then."

Vera made eye contact with the boy, likely the more sympathetic of the pair. "I know my partner attacked you two. I'm truly sorry about that, but at least let me take her to a doctor. Let us go, and we'll be out of your hair." Before he could reply, she added, "You can keep the knife. I only threw it in self-defense."

The male picked up the dagger, which the blonde woman had let fall to the floor, and inspected it. The blade Vera had flung was light and sharp, imbued with a finger ring and bejeweled handle. The craftsmanship was impeccable. He hesitated before offering: "I'm a doctor. Well um, technically a med student, but I can heal your friend."

Perplexed, Vera only lifted Agria's body on her back and chuckled in response. "And why would you help the person who attacked you? For a trespasser, you sure are strange." Though she stumbled a bit under the weight, Vera made her way over to the exit. She was sure she overheard the boy mutter an "oh yea" to himself, as if recent events and his actions hadn't fully registered.

"And how do we know you're not going to alert the whole facility of our presence?" The woman piped up from behind.

Vera threw a smirk back at the pair, as she was now a good distance away from them and had a hand on the door. "Why would I? You've done me no harm. My partner here only fainted from a sudden fever. It is particularly cold tonight. I'm just taking her to the doctor. And as far as I know," she winked. "I never saw you enter this room." With a final hoist, Vera left the trespassers in the lab room of test tubes and the Lance's first victims.

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In the world of Rieze Maxia, the creator and Lord of Spirits Maxwell protected both humans and spirits alike. Humans and spirits share a symbiotic relationship. Humans fed spirits the mana produced by their mana lobes; in return, the spirits cast artes, spells that allow them survival and convenience. But no human has been able to summon The Great Spirits of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air (Efreet, Undine, Gnome, and Sylph) for the past 20 years, their powers reserved to serve Maxwell only.

"That woman must be Maxwell," Vera deduced. Unless her vision had grown impaired under the constant green glow of Fenmont's nighttime spirit cline and the laboratory, she was absolutely certain. The faint outline of the fiery giant that formed behind the blond woman matched every description from the textbooks.

The groan from the weight on her back quickened Vera's footsteps. She stumbled as her feet swerved a corner into a dim corridor. Deeper inside the lab, the green-tinged walls faded to midnight blue. With a clumsy hand, she shoved open the door to her office—thank god she left it unlocked. It wasn't much: pristine white furniture, two wooden bedside drawers, and a window with a breathtaking view of Fenmont's waters.

Vera laid Agria's limp body on one of the beds, rummaged the drawers for spare bandages, and placed a soaked towel on her forehead. Her partner only groaned in response, a sure sign of her unskilled hands in medicine. She thought back to the boy.

I'm a med student. I can heal your friend.

"Med student," she mumbled as she wrapped the crumpled gauze over any skin that so much as looked red. "Lost eyes, a surplus of sympathy, and unstyled hair." She wiped her forehead of sweat. "Talim Medical School? Definitely could've used his healing artes. Vera, you absolute idiot."

Her eyes traveled from the ticking clock hanging above the bed frame, to the ferry ticket peeking out from her pocket, to her trembling hands. The tick-tocks reverberated in her head. She contemplated her options. The mission failed. She traded away her ID for Agria and her safety, and for what? For Agria to heal by herself due to her incompetence? For them to escape from Maxwell, an all-powerful man who came to life out of textbook pages into the form of a hot lady? Even with gloves on, her hands were terribly cold, and shaking.

Only the rattling of the doorknob broke her from her stupor.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood. Her eyes dart from the doorknob to the shadow wavering back and forth from under the door, and her hands hovered over the pockets of her lab coat. Silence; she dared not raise her voice.

Were the intruders caught? Were they searching through every room for them? Or perhaps the higher-ups found she and Agria had left their post? She couldn't take any more chances.

Minutes felt like hours before all signs of the person disappeared. Her breaths exhaled in heaves. She clawed under her lab coat to pull out a flask and took a swig. Flinging the leftover cotton strips on a nearby dresser, Vera dashed around for a pen and piece of paper.

Ferry leaves soon.

Don't make any moves. Heal. Stay low till help comes.

Sorry. Hope the bandages help.

Burn this letter when you finish.

Ly

Vera stuffed what few belongings she had into a leather knapsack and slung it over her shoulder. She was just following orders. Agria is safe. That's all that mattered.

She procured another knife from her lab pocket. This one was curved and jagged. She spun it a few times before stabbing it through the corner of her letter, implanting the note on the bedside drawer.

With a final huff, Vera leaped from her window.

All was still until the door creaked open.

But Agria remained motionless on the bed.

The figure, who entered the unlocked room, didn't spare a glance at the unconscious girl. He peered at the note and pried the dagger from the paper. Turning it over in his hands with the light glistening off the blade, he let out a low chuckle. Looks like he'll have to catch the next ferry.

(3,122 words)